Been to Lewes a few weeks ago to check the famous antiques market - it looked more like a giant junk shop to me. Which is great, since I find antiques usually to expensive and boring; I tend to aim for junk precisely, as they fit my purse and taste. :) After this first visit I came back for more.



Bought one of these tiny 80p flowers from a small garden shop near the car park, run by a lovely gentleman. Unfortunately they lost their colour once home; guess i'm not one for gardening.











Royal mugs! I should have bought the one with Queen Vicky - on my second visit it wasn't there anymore.









Love this postcard from a catwalk show (40s or 50s, not sure).







































Lunch at the pub. Look at the size of this fry-up!







Beer when it's cold? Only if it's ale. :)

The morning was spent arranging the new furniture into place. Woke up early in order to take the disassembled parts of the horrible iron table to the garage. I also took the chance to get rid of the armchairs, the last two remains of that purple atrocity that once (dis)graced the sitting room, hurting my eyes and my aesthetic sensibilities. Good riddance, ugly ones.





We got that chair from free. It used to live in Surrey, in the house of a very pleasant lady who offered us tea and had a grown up son who was apparently autistic and rubbed himself against me calling me Pocahontas. Awkward. Anyway, at least the table is great and I also got the cushions. Two bright yellow, two bright green. They will not make an appearance untill properly covered in tasteful fabric.

The striped armchair cames from Ebay. I want to paint the feet white or duckegg blue, or leave as it is if I can't be bothered. The love polka cushion is result from my trip to Primark yesterday.





On the table, Ikea tray, glass jug from a second hand shop in the village, fake flowers from Columbia Road.



I have had this little metal thingie for some years now, since my first visit to Columbia Road. My idea was to use it in the garden, as the name suggests, but as I still don't have a proper garden here I've been using it indoors. Also on the windowsill my small collection of royal comemorative mugs (some from Camden, others from Lewes): George V coronation (1911, the oldest), Elizabeth II coronation (1953), Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee (1977), Charles and Diana Wedding (1981). I hope to complete my collection this year. William and Katherine's wedding and this year's Jubilee will be pretty easy to find.







I don't know what flowers are these, found them in the backyard.
The teapot below came from a skip.



I thought it looked better on the window, next to the mugs, keeping with a tea theme.





This plant is called "chinese lantern" and I kept these branches from last autumn. The flowers dried up now and will keep for a long time. I decided to put them on the window and liked the result; the light comes through them as if lighting them from the inside. The milk bottle is vintage and I might have purchased it from Pedlars. After taking the photo I realized the logo colour matches the flowers. :)



Part of the other end of the sitting room, with the tv cabinet and coffee table, both new. I don't like to have ikea all over the place and turn the house into a showroom, but as these arrangements are mostly temporary I didn't want to spend a lot of money. The thing is, I ended up really liking the TV cabined and may keep it for the new house; it's really big, so much that I couldn't fit into this picture made with a 50mm lens. The tables I will re-use in some other way or donate, as I have very nice side/coffee tables in Jersey and these basically *scream* ikea.



I also got this, erm, box? Basket? In fact many people it as storage for kid's toys, bedlinen or laundry. I am using to hide the pile of clothes to be ironed. As we do not enjoy ironing we tend to iron stuff on demand, hence a big pile who sat on the floor making me go all OCD. There, 36 quid and I do not have to get my knickers in a twist over this matter any longer. :)



Chantilly approved the changes. MORE PLACES TO PUKE ON, YAY.

Wasting the afternoon with tea, books and pretty things.


Vivien Leigh + young Prince Charles postcards came from a bric-a-brac in Lewes. The lovely annual was gifted to me by a friend who knows my love for old books. This delightful Ugly Dolls mug was one of the results from a particularly expensive afternoon spent at Forbidden Planet in Charing Cross. :)

Daffodils @ Green Park, spring @ Charterhouse Square & around the neighbourhood.

♫ Elevator Love Letter - Stars

I posted a picture of my "chicken bread" and some people asked for the recipe.
Just to make it clear, it's an Atkins recipe and not, strictly speaking, bread. The original recipe has only three ingredients: chicken breast, eggs and butter. I add some cream and wheat bran to give it some texture. If you're not avoiding carbs then I am sure you can find better bread recipes online.

Quick and easy: 1 chicken breast, cooked and cut in small pieces, blended with two eggs and a tablespoon of butter. Add salt and pepper to taste. I add some baking soda but am not sure if it makes a difference. I add extra cream (4 tablespoons) and wheat bran (3 tablespoons) to improve the taste and texture. If it gets too thick, add some more cream. Too watery and you can add more chicken or wheat. Then just bake untill golden on top. If you're on Atkins, I'd count 3 to four grams of carbs for the whole bread.

Three nice guys: monkey, tiger and bear.
It was hard to find the monkey. I searched for several weeks and it was always sold out at Ikea.

Now they’re family. :)

It's funny how the world outside reflects onto my littl emobile world.

Home made soaps from a craft fair at Bakewell (where the lovely pies came from). They were raising donations for a hedgehog shelter and brought along a small hog chap as incentive. We played with it a bit, he was a bit shy but soon came out of his blanket upon being presented with some dried worms - yummy. I got the soaps as a thank you for my donation. The smell is nice but they're almost too pretty to use.

♫ Spring - Tracy Chapman

I woke up this morning with a funny taste in my head.
Spackled some butter over my whole grain bread.
Something tastes different, maybe it’s my tongue.
Something tastes different, suddenly I’m not so young.



I usually do not allow myself to have high hopes anymore. For anything. If it’s a weekend trip, a present I know someone is buying for me, someone new coming into my life, the simple start of a new day… I try to keep things in focus, to accept my reality and be grateful for whatever I already have and may receive in the future.

I do not allow myself to dream too often. It’s very nice to wake up from a nightmare and feel relieved that it’s over. Not so nice when you wake up from a particularly pleasant dream and realize it was all in your mind, and those things, places and people do not actually exist. Or if they do, they’re out of your reach.

But sometimes it happens without me noticing. I can tell myself that I’ll be fine whatever the outcome, but deep down inside I wait. I expect things to be good. I expect people to be nice. I expect places to be beautiful. I expect a sunny day when I plan to go out and then try to act nonchalantly when I open my window in the morning and it’s pouring down with rain. “I knew it”, I say to myself and it’s true - but the flicker of hope i had inside aches before it finally dies.

Those moments are of quiet restlessness. I do not cry, or cough out loud and search for something to do to pretend the pain, however small, isn’t here. I just sit and absorb it, while quietly working from inside to deal with it. The funeral of my hopes is quick and effective, but I know where each one of them are buried and sometimes I like to dig them out. I play with them in my hands as if they were some kind of antique objects of torture. One wouldn’t want to see them at work anymore, but they’re beautiful in a strange way and worth of being admired.

It doesn’t take long as I - mercifully - get bored quickly nowadays. They say that a short attention span is a symptom of the illness that afflicts me but I chose not to see it that way. I prefer to see it as an opportunity for renewal, but in fact it’s only yet another book discarded, another project forgotten and another tv program I will not watch till the end without checking my phone a few times.

But at the core of this ever changing life, nothing really changes. I do not crave changes, in fact most of the time I don't even know how to deal with them. But something in me dreads to think that the biggest ones have already happened and there's not much to look forward to anymore. I'm pretty happy with my lot in life and aware than I'm luckier than most. Shouldn't complain about the very few times life kicks me in the chin. But yet, against my will, I expect it won't. I wait. Dream. Hope.

All the while collecting flowers for the next funerals.



♫ Die Alone - Ingrid Michaelson